If you want to avoid hand editing welcome.txt and other elements on your front page you might want to take a look at our featured product manager for x-cart:
Take a look at our frontpage on
http://www.firetanksoftware.com/ for example, everything including products, images, sidebars etc are controlled easily from our add one
Heres an example from a site running our featured product manager, everything in the RED boxes is controlled by out add on, and all you have to do to install it is add a few smarty tags where you want things to appear, it completely replaces x-carts front page in just a few minutes, and you can change the appearance from the admin add on easliy.
http://www.firetanksoftware.com/fts/files/screenshots/fts_fpm_screen2.gif
For more information and examples please visit our site:
http://www.firetanksoftware.com/fts/customer/-pid-146.html
This add on does not require you to hack up any of the core x-cart php files or database, it works cleanly and does not affect x-cart upgrades.
It works with x-cart 3.X, 4.X and 4.1.X branches